412 . SKETCHES OF CREATION: 



Gulf of Mexico. Continental glaciers will again have 

 brooded over the land. The prairie blossom will have per- 

 ished beneath a mantle of snow as limitless as now the 

 prairie expanse. The fluent rivers will have been chained 

 to their rocky banks. The ruins of great cities will be be- 

 moaned by wintry winds howling past in rage at the pres- 

 ence of unending frost. If yet a narrow belt remains where 

 sickly verdure maintains the desperate conflict with the 

 powers of cold, it is a dwarfed and arctic vegetation. The 

 magnolia has given place to the birch. The cypress has 

 been supplanted by the lichen-covered fir. The emerald 

 has departed from the shivering leaf, and even the hardy 

 violet is pale unto death. All things have assumed a faded 

 and leaden hue. The Mongolian is not known from the 

 Caucasian. Even the sooty negro, if he be not extinct, 

 blanched from the want of light and heat, can only be rec- 

 ognized by his features. Pale, thin, and feeble, the shiver- 

 ing remnant of humanity "have gathered themselves to- 

 gether into compact communities for economy of vital 

 warmth. Forests are consumed to thaw the soil. Tem- 

 ples, costly structures — the patient rearing of the golden 

 ages of the race — are pulled down to eke out the scanty 

 supply of fuel. Men return to caves, whence they came in 

 the beginning. Nature has become their enemy. Science 

 and art are forgotten. The page which narrates the glory 

 of the nineteenth century is like the narrative which tells 

 us of the labors of the men upon the plains of Shinar. 

 Year by year the populations become less — year by year 

 the dread empire of frost is extended. Forests have been 

 consumed ; cities have been burned ; navies have rotted in 

 the deserted, ice-locked harbors ; men have immured them- 

 selves in gloomy caverns till they have almost lost the 

 forms of humanity. 



The end arrives. Unless some sudden catastrophe shall 



